Install Office 2010 on Ubuntu 16.04

From time to time, I need “proper” Word 2010; using LibreOffice doesn’t keep my recruiting agent happy, apparently. I previously documented installing ‘proper’ Office 2010 onto Linux Mint 17, but since I’m now running Ubuntu 16.04, I had to modify my instructions a little. What follows worked for me, anyway.

To begin with, if you haven’t already done so, you will need to install Wine, the Windows ‘compatibility layer’ that allows Windows software to run on Linux. Type all these commands as yourself:

Now we create a new WINEPREFIX for Office. This is Wine’s way of saying “what directory shall I store your Windows software in”. It can be of pretty much any name you fancy, but I like mine tucked into a directory called “wineoffice” hanging off my home directory, but hidden. Hence:

export WINEPREFIX="/home/hjr/.wineoffice/"

Additionally, set the WINEARCH to 32 bit. Wine doesn’t currently cope with running the 64-bit version of Office 2010 very well, so 32-bit it has to be:

export WINEARCH="win32"

As mentioned in my previous article for Office-on-Mint, you now need to install winbind, because the Office installer keels over, half-way through, if you don’t:

sudo apt-get install winbind

Install some more prerequisite files:

winetricks dotnet20 msxml6 corefonts

This will pull more software down from the ‘Net, and will trigger two Windows-looking installation wizards. Click through each in turn. If you are asked to install a Mono and/or a Gecko package, decline to do so, since these have already been installed as part of wine. (Though I wasn’t actually asked to do so in the first place, I’ve ready that it can happen).

And now, finally, you are ready to perform the actual Office installation. My installation media comes as an ISO file, which I mount as follows:

Now it’s just a question of navigating to the appropriate directory within the /mnt directory and launching setup.exe. Do remember: it has to be the 32-bit installer; 64-bit will not work:

cd /mnt/x86
wine setup.exe

Click through the installer and be patient. I also allowed the installer to perform automatic product activation (which worked, I’m happy to say).

Once the installation is finished, type:

winecfg

(That needs to be done in the same session in which you previously set the WINEPREFIX environment variable, so that the configuration tool picks up the correct ‘wine bottle’ to work with. If you start a new terminal session, re-export your WINEPREFIX as before to set it prior to launching the configuration tool. If you don’t get the wine prefix right beforehand, you’ll end up configuring the default wine ‘bottle’, which won’t be the right one).

Click the Libraries tab. Currently, there will be only a single entry for *msxml6 (native,built-in). Click on it to select it, then click [Edit]. Click on the Native (Windows) option and then [OK].

Now click in the ‘New override for library’ combo box and type ‘rich’. Click the down-arrow. That should now display an item called riched20. Click [Add].

In the same override combo box, now type ‘gdip’. Click the down-arrow. You should now see an item called gdiplus. Click on it and then click [Add].

Finally, click on both the new entries in turn and when each is highlighted, click [Edit]. For each, click the Native (Windows) option. Your libraries tab should end up looking like this:

Now in the Dash, you can select the Applications lens and type ‘word’ and see the Office Word icon displayed, or ‘exc’ and see the Office Excel icon. Drag what you need to the launcher and you have a convenient way to launch either.